Book Designers!

So since we have talked so much about Coralie Bickford-Smith, Chip Kid, (and a few other names have come up quite a bit) I thought maybe we could expland on the subject and explore a few other designers.

I took a look at Paul Bacon, who designed my favorite book, Catch-22! I was sad to learn he died recently - just last month!

A bit about Mr. Bacon from his LA Times Obit:

"If a book cover is a canvas, Bacon was its Matisse or Dali, who used minimal imagery and bold lettering to sell such iconic novels as Joseph Heller's "Catch-22," Ken Kesey's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and Philip Roth's "Portnoy's Complaint."

"He made a career out of dressing the most popular books of a particular age and you know those books in your mind's eyes because of those jackets," said Steven Heller, a New York-based historian of illustration.

Heller, for many years art director of the New York Times Book Review, described Bacon as perhaps the inventor of the bestseller jacket and the style that became known as the "Big Book Look."

 

Bacon, who designed more than 6,000 book jackets and was also a jazz singer, musician and noted designer of record album covers for Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie and other jazz masters, died June 8 after a stroke in Fishkill, N.Y., said his son, Preston. He was 91.

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Here is a tumbler of his designs; below are some of his most well known.

[Sorry for the late post, I'm having serious internet issues at home and had to wait until I was back on campus!]

Re: Interactive Fiction

I went to a seminar hosted by Simon and Schuster at Stevenson University last year that looked at their ePub process, and that was my first introduction to interactive ebooks. They showed us a book that was in progress that included animation as you read the story. The animation wasn't for everything, just certain highlights of the book. I loved everything about it.

Another thing they went over was the difference between reflowable and fixed layouts and setting up your files properly. While it wasn't a training course on how to create an interactive ebook, it helped to shed some light on what goes into the process of it. And little did I know at the time, that this is all possible with just using InDesign. Not of course for the animations/videos, but you can embed these types of things into your file. A step-by-step guide for creating an ebook can be found here.

In searching around for some examples of interactive ebooks, here is what I found:

And then I found this beauty! If more books, besides childrens book, were developed like this, I would definitely read more.

Re: Interactive Fiction

In my research, I'm trying to find different ways to give the users that "immersive" experience. Since I haven't read my book (in progress) I'm trying to absorb as much as I can so that as I am reading, I can imagine what I might do. When reading about developers of these immersive fiction books process, they continuously comment on enhancing the reader's experience rather than just giving them extra information because they can. Which, like our previous posts suggest, there is a lot of banter about whether or not it is a good thing. One author suggests that too much of an immersive experience is not a great thing:

"To me, these findings strongly suggest that integrating video, audio and interaction into e-books may not be immersive—keeping the reader engaged in a story. Rather, they might be subversive—distracting readers from the rich internal world that prose can construct within the reader’s mind."

So I think it is important to find that balance and not go too overboard with the immersive/hyper experience we are going for with these books. For us as designers, I think the challenge is to keep it simple enough that the reader doesn't get confused by the content and interesting enough that they can have that, "ah-ha" moment that perhaps they better gain from a non-linear experience within the book.

Re: interactive fiction

I'm not much of an e-book fan. If I can't read the physical book I am much more likely going to listen to the audiobook. So I do not have much exposure to "interactive" ebooks, or "hypertext" or "immersive fiction." When we first started talking about book 3, I looked into some websites for how to create an interactive ebook. I found the blog "A Step-by-Step Guide To Create An Interactive eBook." The blog includes videos explaining how to set up the indesign document, add animations and interactions, add videos, and publish. I also discovered iBooks Author, which I had no idea existed. Though I haven't had a chance to test it out yet, it appears to be more template based, with opportunities to add media but not as easy to customize.
Since then I've found the site Best Interactive eBooks, which displays an interesting interactive ebook for Sherlock Holmes. After looking at this site I can see how this format works well for certain books. For the book I picked, North and South, it makes sense as a fan who likes to reread the book to have access to something that would allow me to experience the story in a new way (though as mentioned in previous posts it does look a lot like a video game). Sherlock Holmes is another example of a story worth experiencing in a new way. But I still think there are plenty of books that would be better suited in their original physical form.

Re: Interactive Fiction

I was trying to get more familiar with the interactivity of a book on a tablet so I went home to play with my mom's iPad which I also learned is where she reads the majority of her books now when she travels - putting her kindle on the back-burner.

It was basically the same as reading a real book, it included all he contents, and I became familiar with some of the interactivity she works with when reading: flipping the page with your finger, scroll through each of the individual the chapters, bookmark certain pages, highlight words, make the text bigger and smaller, and change the background color of the pages of the book (from white to ivory to black for the night reader) I was shocked to see all the personalized options you were able to work with to have the perfect reading material of your liking.

It shows the page number out of the total pages, a scroll at the bottom to move to a certain page with a scroll bar, and how many pages are left in that chapter.

Having the book interactive makes it more interesting. I hope this was able to pass of some ideas.

Re: Interactive Fiction

I came across similar articles about interactive ebooks as Jen did about why interactive books never became successful. So finding good examples was challenging for me. The best example of an interactive ebook that I found was Price and Prejudice (sorry Layla, I hope this doesn't mess up your idea, but this video really does a good job of explaining the interactive aspects).

With that being said, I'm still having a hard time coming up with ideas for the two books I am deciding from: The Watery Parts of the World and Little Bee: both of which I haven't read. Based on the summaries, both could work, but I guess I need to read one and I'll have a better idea. If anyone has read either (Jen recommended The Watery Parts of the World) please let me know your thoughts.

Mounting Adhesive we discussed yesterday:

Scotch Positionable Mounting Adhesive on Amazon--mine is in a blue box, but it's the same product, and it's cheaper on the site now than it was when I bought it for Jeanne's class. It looks like they have it on the Dick Blick site, too, but I didn't check the price there.